He now sent the home folks away from the farm, buckled on his wings and walked along the prairie road waiting for a breeze. The road was raised five feet above the plain and bordered by ditches ten feet wide. His wings felt light; he ran forward to test their lift, and he thought to amuse himself by jumping the ditch. The result is thus expressed in his own words:[25] “So I took a good run across the road and jumped at the ditch. But, oh, horrors; once across the ditch my feet did not come down to earth; I was gliding on the air, and making vain efforts to land; for my aëroplane had set out on a cruise. I dangled only one foot from the soil, but, do what I would, I could not reach it, and I was skimming along without the power to stop. At last my feet touched the earth; I fell forward on my hands; broke one of my wings, and all was over; but goodness, how frightened I had been! I was saying to myself that if even a light wind-gust occurred, it would toss me up 30 to 40 feet into the air, and then surely upset me backward, so that I would fall on my back. This I knew perfectly, for I understood the defects of my machine. I was poor, and I had not been able to provide myself with a more complete aëroplane. All’s well that ends well. I then measured the distance between my toe marks, and found it to be 138 feet. “Here is the rationale of the thing. In making my jump I acquired a speed of 11 to 14 miles per hour, and just as I crossed the ditch I must have met a puff of rising wind. It probably was traveling some 8 to 11 miles per hour, and the two speeds added together produced enough pressure to carry my weight.” He repaired his wing and repeated the test a few days later. A violent wind gust came; picked him up from the earth, and whelmed him over. In his alarm he allowed his “wish-bone” to spread, and the wings to fold up like those of a butterfly at rest, pinching him between them like a nut in a nutcracker. One wonders whether the overwheeling vultures witnessed this gentleman’s flight with any sense of humor. After mature reflection, Mouillard concluded that he should give his aëroplane a rudder, and flex the wings, in order to insure adequate control. But here he halted, being a poor man unskilled in the art of construction. He had reached the limit of his endowments. He had observed faithfully and described charmingly the wonderful flights of various birds; but he must leave to his technical successors the pleasure of imitating or excelling those extraordinary maneuvers—leave them the pleasure, the sacrifice, the long years of toil and danger, accompanied perhaps by indiscriminate applause or derision.